Sunday, September 14, 2008

God And Adoption

I've toyed with the idea of posting this, but one of my 'blog buddies' got slammed with a really ugly comment on her blog and it just settled it for me that I needed to post this...

A while back, someone wrote this quote in response to another adoptive parent saying that God had placed a calling on her life to adopt...

“No god told me to adopt my daughter and I would never teach her it was god's will she be adopted and have to deal with all the loss this entails. In my opinion no loving god would want this for any child.”

Amazingly, God opened a door for me to privately respond to this person and He clearly gave me the words...but in light of what was written to my friend, I think I want to address this...

As Christians, we need to be prepared to answer things like this...we need to think it through and understand it for ourselves...

This is what I wrote to the lady who made the comment above...

You’re right, a loving God would not choose this for His precious creation. The irony in that is that we scream and rail against the idea of a God that doesn’t allow us free will or freedom of choice, then we turn around and scream and rail at the idea of a God who doesn’t fix all of the messes we make as a result of our choices.

The need for adoption is a man made problem, not a God made problem.
God allowed man the freedom to choose and not surprisingly, man made a mess of it.

I’m just curious, would you be ok without the freedom to choose, without free will…if a “loving god” predetermined and dictated our every action, feeling, thought, word? Do you realize that that’s the only way that there would be no evil in this world, if this “loving god” stepped in and took away every man’s choice so that only good would happen?

Adoption is the solution of a very loving God who is taking a horrible, tragic situation and redeeming it.

The bottom line is this...man rebelled against God in the Garden, at the beginning of time...God doesn't owe us anything...we aren't entitled to anything...we don't deserve any second chances.

But out of His amazing grace and mercy, God had a different plan...to redeem and restore what evil had tried to destroy. I believe with all of my heart that adoption is one of those plans that He put into place to carry out the restoration process. And I believe that God does indeed call us to this amazing journey... This is not a journey that I would have chosen on my own, my heart wasn't big enough... But since God is in the heart changing business, He had other thoughts on that. I am so thankful that He did!

3 comments:

Pam said...

Beautifully stated, Sharla.

Pam

Truly Blessed said...

Sharla,
I'm still catching up on your older posts because I want to really focus on what you've written.

This is a beautifully written and SO TRUE post! I wonder what the recipient's reaction was to it. In fact, it reminds me so much of a chapter in Chuck Colson's book THE FAITH. He couldn't have written it better himself.

I might "steal" this someday -- hope that will be okay...

Elizabeth Marshall said...

I have just found your blog and this was the first message of yours that I read. I agree with you. Adoption is a situation that God has given to children who would otherwise not have a loving family to take care of. I can not imagine someone feeling that this is not a choice of God's. I believe he has given this opportunity to individuals who can not have children and to people who may have had a lapse in judgement. Adoption gives the birth mother a way to make a responsible decision from one that was not responsible.

Elizabeth